I‘m part Jewish, part Australian and part Indian: where do I belong?

When ELANA BENJAMIN was asked to write about growing up Indian in Australia, she faced an identity crisis.

Black Inc.’s latest anthology in their Growing Up series, Growing Up Indian in Australia, will be published this July. I’m thrilled to be a contributor. But I almost didn’t send in a submission. As the child of Indian-Jewish immigrants to Australia, I’m not typical Indian – I’m white, my mother never wore a sari, we didn’t celebrate Diwali.

So I wasn’t sure I belonged in a collection of Indian stories. At the same time, I was drawn to writing about my experience growing up in a Jewish-Australian family so closely tied to India, one which is shared by few others.

While I contemplated whether or not to submit, my daughter weighed in. “You’re not ethnically Indian! You can’t submit!” she insisted. When I finally decided to start writing and see where it took me, she accused me of cultural appropriation. Her message was clear: You don’t belong there. And it stung.

It’s well established that belonging is a core human need. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, only physiological needs (food, air, water and shelter) are more important. Expanding on Maslow, recent research shows that finding a sense of belonging in close social relationships and with community is vital for wellbeing.

As a child, I had a deep sense of belonging to my large Sephardi-Mizrahi family. Among the Benjamin clan, I was gloriously the same as everyone else: all my 17 first cousins on my father’s side have at least one parent who’s from Bombay and many, like me, have two. Away from the Benjamins, though, life was different.